Don't get me wrong but the fundamental way the theif's skills work, off of initiative, seem to heavily favor spikes over prolonged combat. Which is a problem in PvE since you aren't just fighting 1 or 2 guys with not that much health, you're either fighting legions of people or 1 guy with a TRUCK LOAD of health.

I'm not saying they will be useless, but they will probably end up having like 2 or even just 1 build that is as powerful as another class' build in PvE. This is, unless, there is a mechanic in place that allows the theif to do a lot of stacked damage via his spammable skills, like if his aa caused stacking poison or something, or if his AoE poison cloud did ramping up damage over time. This could be PvE only, but these kinds of things wouldn't help him in most cases in PvP, since if you're dumb enough to stand in a cloud of poisonous smoke for 10 seconds, you deserve to take 5000 damage.

I don't know these guys seem to be built from the ground up for Structured 5v5.

The Thief isn't entirely useless in PvE. However, it is pidgeonholed in PvE like it is in PvP. In PvE, you see that the Thief is delicate with low health and medium armour. It doesn't have a lot of defensive skills like the other low health professions (Elementalist and Guardian). It depends on staying out of the way and not getting hit. Contrary to that objective, melee weapons depend on you getting up close and personal where you need to be really good at reading the opponent because mistakes can be fatal especially around the bigger mobs. As usual for a melee Thief it is "go stealth or go home".

But in the ranged department, the Thief certainly isn't lacking. The shortbow hits many targets at once. Look at the skills list, the first skill hits 3, the 2nd and 4th skills are AoE and your 3rd and 5th function as escapes. I say taking on groups with a shortbow shouldn't be that hard if you keep moving.

As for pistols, I've noticed that certain trait combinations can allow a p/p Thief to keep a foe permanently crippled and vulnerable in light of the new crit chance calcualtions. They can't hit you if they can't catch you.

The Thief isn't entirely useless in PvE. However, it is pidgeonholed in PvE like it is in PvP. In PvE, you see that the Thief is delicate with low health and medium armour. It doesn't have a lot of defensive skills like the other low health professions (Elementalist and Guardian). It depends on staying out of the way and not getting hit. Contrary to that objective, melee weapons depend on you getting up close and personal where you need to be really good at reading the opponent because mistakes can be fatal especially around the bigger mobs. As usual for a melee Thief it is "go stealth or go home".

But in the ranged department, the Thief certainly isn't lacking. The shortbow hits many targets at once. Look at the skills list, the first skill hits 3, the 2nd and 4th skills are AoE and your 3rd and 5th function as escapes. I say taking on groups with a shortbow shouldn't be that hard if you keep moving.

As for pistols, I've noticed that certain trait combinations can allow a p/p Thief to keep a foe permanently crippled and vulnerable in light of the new crit chance calcualtions. They can't hit you if they can't catch you.

What I mean is that, even in the ranged department, his moves will rely on initiative, which means he can get a lot of moves out fast, which is great for spikes, but over the long run in a fight, other classes will have more moves and in the end deal more sustained damage.

And spike based builds have always mostly not been useful in pve given that you are either fighting endless mobs or a small amount of mobs with endless health. In both cases, sustained damage is fundamentally more useful than spikes.

Throw in Preparedness for good measure and you'll theoretically never run out of initiative to spam. The caveat is this works best with multi-hit skills like Unload or Trick Shot. Since each hit for those has a seperate chance to crit and therefore a seperate chance to activate Opportunist. Works best with Unload though since Combined Tactics won't trigger of Trick Shot.

Believe me a properly built Thief is more than capable of sustained damage.

There's PvE and there's explorable dungeons.
For PvE, the guy will be just fine. The game is easy enough so that even poor classes can do it, plus DE's allow everyone to lend a hand, even if someone would object.

ED's on the other hand are a mystery. I think ALL classes will be pigeonholed into certain options, but I don't think we have seen enough to be able to say that the thief will not work there. But, the guy seems WAY to selfish - and it's once again down to stealth. If his survivability would be depend on a shitload of controlling conditions, one could use those to help one's team-mates. But with stealth, you just save yourself.

In most action rpg games, even if you don't have a high level, if you're skilled enough you can keep running and shooting and win any combat.

GW2 has a combat system as you can see on many videos (where the player has a clue of how to play) that is closer to action games than to classic MMO combat, so a Thief IMO with all his skills to inmobilize and enter stealth can win any fight (sometimes using a lot of time "playing like a b**h" like in many action rpg) and exit it if he has low health as stealth automatically breaks agro and the AI won't follow you. At least judging for what I've see in videos I can predict that playing a Thief will be great for anyone used to play action games.

In most action rpg games, even if you don't have a high level, if you're skilled enough you can keep running and shooting and win any combat.

GW2 has a combat system as you can see on many videos (where the player has a clue of how to play) that is closer to action games than to classic MMO combat, so a Thief IMO with all his skills to inmobilize and enter stealth can win any fight (sometimes using a lot of time "playing like a b**h" like in many action rpg) and exit it if he has low health as stealth automatically breaks agro and the AI won't follow you. At least judging for what I've see in videos I can predict that playing a Thief will be great for anyone used to play action games.

What? If you mean by soloing, this won't work... AT ALL since mobs reset after a few moments of not being attacked so theifs will be a weak solo class since their tankiness relies on evasion rather than absorption.

Theifs imo will be weak all round in PvE unless that trait set leyana was talking about will prove to be great for prolonged damage/PvE and bad for spikes/PvP.

Throw in Preparedness for good measure and you'll theoretically never run out of initiative to spam. The caveat is this works best with multi-hit skills like Unload or Trick Shot. Since each hit for those has a separate chance to crit and therefore a separate chance to activate Opportunist. Works best with Unload though since Combined Tactics won't trigger of Trick Shot.

Believe me a properly built Thief is more than capable of sustained damage.

Which would prove exactly the point I was making in the OP, the theif would only have 1 or 2 builds that can be used in PvE and be on par with another profession's PvE build.

Looking at the traits that have come in with the recent beta, It appears as though Anet is attempting to create lines of traits which allow appropriate initiative management with the different playstyles. As someone posted above, the ability to restore initiative with 1 spam, use of your 3, as well as with crits, should allow a thief with decent crit chance to keep their initiative going without resorting to continuously stealthing or stealing.

I would like to see how the theif goes at kiting mobs using the various mobility skills, as well as the effects of stealth on mob aggro (I know one of the previous Yogscast videos showed that it broke aggro, but I'd like to see how much of a disadvantage this would actually put you in when killing mobs)

With Sigil of Superior Blood you can apply on each melee weapon that allows 30% chance of life steal on critical. 30% chance alone is strong. If they stack to 60% and you geared your build to critical, your every other hit steals life. If you put 30 points in critical you have 40 points to put into anything else of your choosing variety.

With Combined Tactics and Leaping Death Blossom or any other high damage skill you can stay alive for a very long time even without other utilities.

There's PvE and there's explorable dungeons.
For PvE, the guy will be just fine. The game is easy enough so that even poor classes can do it, plus DE's allow everyone to lend a hand, even if someone would object.

ED's on the other hand are a mystery. I think ALL classes will be pigeonholed into certain options, but I don't think we have seen enough to be able to say that the thief will not work there. But, the guy seems WAY to selfish - and it's once again down to stealth. If his survivability would be depend on a shitload of controlling conditions, one could use those to help one's team-mates. But with stealth, you just save yourself.

Shadow refuge stealths and heals the whole team. There's some traits to enhance support as well. From what I've seen, they've already gone a long way toward making the thief more of a team player than this archtype has been in other games. There's also cross profession combos to consider. That, along with moving away from scripted gameplay and set roles is a good sign. Thieves may hold some interesting solutions to dungeon encounters since they are designing them in such a way that multiple strategies can be used as the rule rather than the exception

theuprising said:

Your moves better be crap strong naturally to make up for the fact uve dumped so many resources into initiave management.

You don't have to select them all. The point is different trait lines have ways of enhancing initiative so even if you don't utilize one you can still get it via another trait line depending on your play style, or you can do it through skills or some combination of the two.

I don't get what the OP is trying to say... That thieves are limited to initiative and have to manage ini spending and gaining, yet other classes don't have cool downs? A smart thief won't blow 10-15ini when a mob is at 100% health because that will leave him vulnerable until he regens some more ini. Just like any other class won't blow all 5skills one after another and be helpless until their cool downs are up. If you are planning on 1-2-3-4-5= dead mob then you will fail miserably at pve in this game. This game is based on you reacting to the situations that you come across. Just cuz a thief can spam one skill with no cool down doesn't mean he HAS to.